If solitude is
proud, so is society vulgar. In society, high advantages are set down
to the individual as disadvantages. We sink as easily as we rise,
through sympathy. So many men whom I know are degraded by their
sympathies, their native aims being high enough, but their relation
all too tender to the gross people about them. Men cannot afford to
live together on their merits, and they adjust themselves by their
demerits,--by their love of gossip, or sheer tolerance and animal
good-nature. They untune and dissipate the brave aspirant.
The remedy is, to reinforce each of these moods from the
other. Conversation will not corrupt us, if we come to the assembly in
our own garb and speech, and with the energy of health to select what
is ours and reject what is not. Society we must have; but let it be
society, and not exchanging news, or eating from the same dish. Is it
society to sit in one of your chairs? I cannot go to the houses of my
nearest relatives, because I do not wish to be alone. Society exists
by chemical affinity, and not otherwise.
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